You Say You Want a Resolution?

I like the idea of New Year's resolutions. New year, new start, new beginnings, new ways...maybe even new you. And in theory, resolutions are great. They're wonderful at providing aims, at voicing accomplishments, at saying, "Hey, world, look here. This is what I'd dearly love to accomplish this year. And please try your best not to get in the way of my accomplishments, thank you very much."

Yes, indeed. The idea of resolutions is good.

But as is the case with almost everything in life--with the exception (in most instances) of how to put on one's pants--the idea and the practice are more than a little bit different.

My resolutions invariably become a laundry list of things I want to be better at and things I want to do better at. And all of a sudden, I find myself at some point in the middle of January wondering exactly what I like about myself. Perhaps that sounds a little extreme, but sometimes I make resolutions and realize I've done nothing but list what I feel are my failings in some strange, inverted way.

Last year I resolved to say yes to more stuff more often...and to be honest, I don't know if I've said no more in my life than I did in the past year. Some of it was necessary no-ing. But some of it...was just me kind of being a chicken.

It's that whole theory-and-practice quandary: yes, in theory, I'd love to be more outgoing. I'd love to be in the best shape of my life, to play the guitar, to travel outside the country, to write a novel, to actually list a publication. I'd love to be entirely reliable, to be always happy, to exercise all necessary follow-through to make all of these things I'd love to do and be come to life.

But it's hard. And yes, I suppose that's me whining a little bit. But it's nevertheless true. Change isn't as easy as putting on my pants. What's easy is gliding along comfortably in familiar patterns. I once said that I felt Anne-like, but these days, I'm afraid I go far too often without flying or thud.

So if I'm to make a resolution this year, I feel that the most honest one to make would be this: I resolve to actually make effort to change. And I permit failures. All sorts of failures.

In Which I Admit That I Failed NaNoWriMo

This year, I thought I'd give into National Novel Writing Month. I thought I'd give into it in a big, big way. I thought, in short, I would SMASH it.

That did not happen.

If you do not promptly commence being shocked...well, you probably know me.

Writing stuff, I have determined, carries with it a lot of pressure. That's not to say I don't love it, because that would be a lie. And that's not to say that I didn't initially ask people to hold me accountable for any NaNoWriMo related promises. And also: words are cool. It's even cooler that you can string them together to form a sentence, then string those sentences together to form a story.

Writing stuff is also intensely personal. At least, it starts off that way. These words move from my brain into my fingers onto my pages, and then I want to keep them. At least for a little while, anyway. But after that initial wanting-to-keep them phase, I want to ditch them. ALL of them. Quite badly, really.

Was I going somewhere with this?

Ah yes, my NaNoWriMo Novel Attempt is currently 12 pages long, which means that it's several thousand words short of its goal. But it's also a number of pages I didn't have before I so congenially attempted to throng with the scribbling masses. (Okay, actually, that was when I knew it would be too hard: writing isn't congenial; it's actually fairly solitary. If you invite people to a writing party, it's not as though there's much partying to be done.)

So yes, I failed. But at least I started going somewhere.

Me and My iPod

For a great long while, I was incredibly adamant that I didn't want to own an iPod. One of my biggest reasons for not wanting the iPod was that I saw too many people who too fully tuned out the rest of the world as soon as they placed the earbuds in their ears. I like being aware of my surroundings. As a half-blind person, it's never been a good thing when I've gotten so wrapped in something that I stopped paying attention to where I was going. I've had my share of bruises, cuts, and sprains to prove it. (Worse yet: the solid majority of these pratfalls always seemed to happen when there was an attractive, single male nearby to witness my moment of glorious clumsiness. The nice ones, I've learned, walk over to check that you're all right. The rude ones snicker and/or ignore you.)

Except that I caved a while ago and acquired an iPod (my first iPod was free, a brick of a thing handed down to me from my father--seriously, I think you could seriously have maimed someone with that iPod...when it died, I had to replace it with a Nano because I couldn't imagine life iPodless), and now I find that I love it for precisely that reason: it creates its own little world I can safely insulate myself in.

It's a wonderful tool when I want to be fully preoccupied with my own thoughts or with one particular type of action (like, say, writing...or cleaning). The music literally playing in my head becomes a background soundtrack for whatever I'm doing and allows me to fully ensconce myself in whatever I'm doing.

Sometimes I wonder if the me from back then, were she to see iPod-insulated-me now, would ruefully shake her head and mourn...

In Pursuit of...Something

As I previously mentioned, I'm breaking down and participating in NaNoWriMo. I WILL write a novel this month, dagnabit!!! It seemed to be a good year for it. Ph.D. application plans have been placed on hold, and all I do right now is work and then come home and...do stuff that isn't always as productive as it should be. Not that I think I need to be doing something for every minute of every day, but let's just say that I could've been using my time more wisely and leave it at that.

As of today, 1,779 words--meaning I've surpassed the first day goal of 1,667 words. Go me! I applaud myself. (Yes, I'm so humble, I applaud myself. There may also have been a literal pat on the back. Or maybe I was just scratching my shoulder.)

Anyway, I'm finding that the writing goes far more quickly when I don't dwell on being perfect. I believe I also noted earlier that I thought this would be true. But now I can AFFIRM that it's true. It actually behooved me to pretend that my backspace key does not exist. Not kidding.

But I realized something today: in order to achieve something, I have to pursue a goal without pursuing perfection. Pursuing perfection causes me to freeze up and spazz out and stop even trying, because I know I can't make anything that's perfect. Pursuing something else (in this case, my 1,667 words or more) gave me an aim without making me feel bad about how I quickly or how well I was reaching that aim.

Seems as though there might be a life lesson in there somewhere...

All Right, NaNoWriMo, I Give In

At approximately this time every year, someone inevitably asks me a question that--for me--had started to become cringeworthy. "Katie," they would say, "are you going to participate in NaNoWriMo?"

It's not that I want to not write a novel, mind you, it's just that...well, a lot of people seemed convinced that any creative mind worth his or her salt would attempt to scribble away and write something in the month of November. Jump on the bandwagon, most of them seemed to be saying. This month, we're all writing novels--so why don't you attempt to write a novel in a month as well?

But see, I have this perfectionism problem. I can be a tremendously prolific writer when I want to be: but just because I can write a lot when I want to doesn't mean that what I write is actually any good.

I realized this the other day when I knocked out a silly, grammar-related, four-paragraph (ish) e-mail at work in about...ten minutes. Probably less than that. I double-checked it for typos and such (because really, wouldn't it be super ironic to send out a grammar-related e-mail with errors?) and sent it off, not terribly worried. It's not that I wanted it to go unread, mind you, but I didn't have a lot of personal investment in that e-mail.

It's impossible not to create something larger without becoming invested in it. And that investment, in turn, leads to the perfectionism quandary: I don't want to let go of anything, even in a small way, until I'm more or less satisfied with it. If I tapped into my powers of prolificness (prolificivity?)...I have a feeling my initial result would look bad. If I lucked out, it might look not entirely bad...But it would be mostly bad.

Except that it occurred to me a few days ago that most things need to be a little (or a lot) bad, because we see what needs improvement--and then we can improve it. So this year, I'll actually participate in this November writing event to see what I can come up with. And I'll talk myself into not expecting things to be perfect right away.

We'll see how it goes.

Wandering Down Book-Memory Lane

I have a default present-buying setting that automatically directs my inner compass to one specific place: the bookstore. This default setting becomes even more validated when my sister tells me that my nephew loves books that have textures in them. (In all fairness, she also told me he needs pajamas. But that is neither here nor there.)

Anyway, as I perused the children's book section today, I came across a book that has long remained in my memory and may possibly still be on my parents' bookshelf: Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel.

And for a brief couple of minutes, I felt just like a little kid all over again.

Don't you love that? Books are wonderful, wonderful things.

On Why Sometimes I Ignore People I Once Knew

Today I walked past someone I used to know. At least, I'm relatively certain I used to know him: if not, he bore an incredibly uncanny resemblance to someone who studied poetry with me five years ago.

When you major in something such as Creative Writing and Poetry during your college years, you learn something in your workshops: there are other people as talented as you. And there are other people far, far more talented than you are. It's a good place to be, really, if you have an ego problem. Because unless you truly are amazing, the ego inevitably deflates more than a little as you help other people with what they wrote and realize Hey, this is far better than anything I've done yet.

Let's face it. Not all talents are created equal.

Anyway. As I walked into work today, this guy I'm pretty sure I once knew was walking in the opposite direction. He looked like...himself...from a distance. But when I got closer to him, I pulled out my cell phone and pretended to check text messages. I didn't want to make eye contact.

I always find it odd and sort of...disappointing...to see how many of my former classmates are living regular lives. Most of us haven't done anything exceptional since we left school. Only a small number of us have published--and that includes the talented ones. I don't know how many of us still try, or how many of us have simply relegated ourselves to living something different than what we imagined for ourselves just a few years ago.

And that's when I realized: I think I do stuff like this because I'm a little disappointed with myself. At what point did I opt to stop doing the brave thing and embrace the practical but not as gutsy thing? And was that decision really as wise as I liked to think it was at the time?

I think it may be time to dust off some dreams.